Live Your Life

This blog post is ENTIRELY NOT MINE. I am copying it over from an issue of The New Yorker. It is written by Dave Cowen, and it is absolutely hilarious. I want other people to enjoy how brilliant and hilarious it is.

This speaks to me as a lover of learning, a lover of reading, a lover of writing. It speaks to the true English teacher in me. And, a dig at Kanye West doesn't hurt either. Enjoy.

Live Your Life

by David Cowen

"I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book's autograph. I am a proud nonreader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life."

-Kanye West, promoting his book, Thank You and You're Welcome

Whoever said life is an open book probably didn't have any friends. Sure, he probably liked the people in his book. But did they like him? No. Why? Because they aren't real.

My friends are real. They actually talk to me. Like just the other day my friend Bill said, "I'm not reading your email for you anymore. You need to learn how to read." And I said, "Bill, if you don't read me my email, I won't sign an autograph for your son." And Bill was, like, "Well, go f*** yourself. I'm going back to the hospital." Bill's son, Bill Jr., or Billy Bob, was in the children's unit there. He didn't read the label on the box of his Sticky Stones, and when he swallowed three of the iron-ore magnets they fused into a chain along the wall of his esophagas. Bill, Sr., felt extra bad because he hadn't read that a consumer safety group had placed the Sticky Stones on its annual list of worst toys. I told Bill that's life. That stuff happens when you are doing stuff. In life. Real life. If I told you what happened to Billy Bob had happened in a book, you would have said no way, that would never happen, that's fiction. But it did. Because I told you it did.

Now, don't get me wrong. There are a few books that I am a fan of. Matchbooks are good. A lot of people are under the impression that books burn only at a certain temperature. But it's just not true. I can burn most books at or below 451 degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes below 300, if I soak the jacket in lighter fluid.

I also like MacBooks. You can really do stuff on them, you know. Like see how many followers you have on Twitter, or take pictures of yourself with Photo Booth, or play Second Life, or check if Bill has checked your e-mail. I miss Bill. He set up my Facebook account on my MacBook. I've got my own page on there now. Do you know how many fans Books have? Twenty-five thousand seven hundred and sixty-four. That's it. So I'm not alone here. You know what else has more fans than Books? The Olive Garden. One hundred and eighty-five thousand nine hundred and eighty-six. What else? Sleep: over three hundred thousand. More people would rather be unconscious than read a book. Now, I'm not condoning sleep. I'm about doing stuff. Living life. But it goes to show that I am in the majority.

Right now you're probably wondering. Hey, why is this guy, a proud non-reader of books, writing this? Isn't this a Catch-22? And I say no, it's not. It's a Catch-23. What's a Catch 23? It's like a Catch-22, except there is no catch. I don't want you to read this. In fact, you should stop reading right now. Seriously. Stop reading this. Start doing stuff. What kind of stuff, you ask? I don't know. Why don't you go to the Olive Garden? But just watch out. They give you the never-ending salad before the never-ending pasta bowl. You wouldn't think so, but the salad fills you right up. The lettuce is mostly iceberg. All water. And the water really makes you feel like shit when you don't make it to the fettucine Alfredo.

Sometimes when I don't know what to do I imagine other people doing stuff. But like people in a different time. Or like people in a different place. And I think of how cool it would be to be that person for awhile. Like to know how other people I don't know talk or do stuff. How they really live, you know? But that's when I'm not doing stuff of my own. Which is all the time anyway.



So what do you think of "Live Your Life?"